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Year weather records fell

&nbsp;When the calendar turned to 2007, the heat went on and stayed there. As 2007 draws to a close, it is shaping up to be the hottest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere.

Strollers along Barrie’s waterfront in early November, undeterred by the season’s first snowfall. (BILL SANDFORD PHOTO)

By Seth BorensteinTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Wed., Dec. 26, 2007

WASHINGTON – When the calendar turned to 2007, the heat went on and the weather just got weirder.

January was the warmest first month on record worldwide – 0.85 degrees Celsius above normal. It was the first time since record-keeping began in 1880 that the globe's average temperature has been so far above the norm for any month of the year.

And as 2007 drew to a close, it was also shaping up to be the hottest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere.

U.S. weather stations broke or tied 263 all-time high temperature records, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. weather data.

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England had the warmest April in 348 years of record-keeping there, shattering the record set in 1865 by more than 0.6 C.

"Here in Canada, we can see the effects of climate change," Environment Minister John Baird told a Toronto audience in early December.

"Winters don't come as they used to; they're much warmer ... Up in the Arctic in a place called Inuvik we've had a school which has actually come off its foundation because the permafrost is melting."

The World Meteorological Organization, a Geneva-based United Nations agency, reported another eye-opening event in the Far North.

"For the first time in recorded history, the disappearance of ice across parts of the Arctic opened the Canadian Northwest Passage for about five weeks starting 11 August," the organization said. ``Nearly 100 voyages in normally ice-blocked waters sailed without the threat of ice."

Climate scientists say that the Arctic, which serves as the world's refrigerator, dramatically warmed in 2007, shattering records for the amount of melting ice. Sea ice melted not just to record levels, but far beyond the previous melt record.

The ice sheets that cover a portion of Greenland retreated to an all-time low and permafrost in Alaska warmed to record levels.

With the Northwest Passage becoming the most navigable in modern times, Russia planted a flag on the seabed under the North Pole, claiming sovereignty. Other Arctic countries including Canada dispute the validity of the Russian claim.

"Across North America, severe to extreme drought was present across large parts of the western U.S. and Upper Midwest, including southern Ontario, Canada, for much of 2007," the World Meteorological Organization said.

The decade of 1998-2007 has been the warmest on record, it said.

It wasn't just the temperature. The UN agency mentioned ``devastating floods, drought and storms in many places around the world."

And there were other oddball weather events.

A tornado struck New York City in August, inspiring the tabloid headline: "This Ain't Kansas!"

In the Middle East, an equally rare cyclone spun up in June, hitting Oman and Iran.

Major U.S. lakes shrank; Atlanta had to worry about its drinking water supply. South Africa got its first significant snowfall in 25 years. And on Reunion Island, 640 kilometres east of Africa, nearly 394 centimetres of rain fell in three days – a world record for the most rain in 72 hours.

Individual weather extremes can't be attributed to global warming, scientists always say. However, "it's the run of them and the different locations" that have the mark of man-made climate change, said top European climate expert Phil Jones, director of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia in England.

2007 seemed to be the year that climate change shook the thermometers, and those who warned that it was beginning to happen were suddenly honoured.

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Oscar and he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international group of thousands of scientists.

The climate panel, organized by the UN, released four major reports in 2007 saying man-made global warming was incontrovertible and an urgent threat to millions of lives.

Baird said the UN reports indicate "that climate change is real and it can be seen on every continent and in every ocean on every part of the planet."

Through the first 10 months, 2007 was the hottest year recorded on land and the third hottest when ocean temperatures are included.

Smashing records was common, especially in August. At U.S. weather stations, more than 8,000 new heat records were set or tied for specific August dates.

More than 60 per cent of the United States was either abnormally dry or suffering from drought at one point in August.

In November, Atlanta's main water source, Lake Lanier, shrank to an all-time low. Lake Okeechobee, crucial to south Florida, hit its lowest level in recorded history in May, exposing muck and debris not seen for decades. Lake Superior, the biggest and deepest of the Great Lakes, dropped to its lowest August and September levels in history.

Los Angeles hit its driest year on record. Lakes fed by the Colorado River and which help supply water for more than 20 million westerners, were only half full.

Australia, already a dry continent, suffered its worst drought in a century, making global warming an election issue. On the other extreme, record rains fell in China, England and Wales.

Meteorologists have chronicled strange weather years for more than a decade, but nothing like 2007.

Get used to it, scientists said. As man-made climate change continues, the world will experience more extreme weather, bursts of heat, torrential rain and prolonged drought, they said.

"We're having an increasing trend of odd years," said Michael MacCracken, a former top U.S. federal climate scientist, now chief scientist at the Climate Institute in Washington.

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